


Here Comes the Sun

by CRMediaGal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Art, Canon Rewrite, Character Death, Digital Art, F/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, References to Depression, SSHG - Freeform, Sad Ending, You Have Been Warned, snamione, snanger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CRMediaGal/pseuds/CRMediaGal
Summary: Sometimes it is only upon death that confessions are revealed and truths understood. One-shot, AU, Post-Hogwarts.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Here Comes the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes : _Originally posted at fanfiction.net in December 2012_.**
> 
> **If you're on the hunt for something light and fluffy...this isn't it. Please mind the warnings.**
> 
> **Disclaimer : _Harry Potter_ is copyrighted to and belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just playing in her sandbox.**

* * *

_**Here Comes the Sun** _

**By CRMediaGal**

* * *

_"Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter_  
 _Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here"_  
\- The Beatles

* * *

Soft, pale yellow rays crept in through the half-drawn, moth-eaten curtains. Odd, considering it had been a rainy, overcast day until roughly five minutes ago, when he had finally laid himself down to put an end to it all. How terribly ironic that the sun should finally peek through the grey clouds, and at such a moment as this.

He had long detested the sun, much preferring the comforting thrumming of rain against his bedroom window. Even as a child, he had welcomed the rain. Sometimes it felt as though those heavy showers came purposely, if not exclusively, to match his moods, his circumstances, the tragedy that was his life; but that, he would quickly conclude, was 'nonsense'. _No one can make it rain, not even bloody wizards and witches._

On this day, rain would have set the tone much better. To him, it was music to die to; a calming cleansing of everything: all the secrets no one knew, the thoughts he could never convey, or the knowledge he would ultimately take with him to the grave.

Yet, the rain hadn't kept _her_ away. Much to his discomfort, yet quiet relief, she had _still_ found him spread out on his back in the middle of an unmade bed, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling; at those peculiar streams of sunlight. Was he even aware that the sun had come out?

"You bastard," were the first words she uttered upon her entrance, shocked and panic-stricken by what her eyes surveyed. "You selfish, selfish bastard..."

"To the very end," he returned with a disturbing, almost satanic smile that made her blood run cold.

Something about that smile unsettled her. Maybe it was the strained, false laughter that accompanied it. Maybe it was the rarity of that smile altogether. He rarely smiled, after all. Rather, his surly self tended to smirk in mockery at everyone and everything that crossed his path. She had never been an exception to his general displeasure, but a handful of times, he had astonished her with a genuine smile.

And only for _her_ to ever glimpse.

There was no mistaking that sour, near painful chuckle of his; that ironic way that his lips twisted at the edges of his mouth. _This_ was mockery. A smack in the face to the second chance Life had granted him, and the explanations that surfaced were laden with bitterness, not regret.

The curly-haired witch hovered over his limp form, her only alleviation that he was still, for the moment, conscious and breathing. She couldn't tell from the off the extent of his afflictions nor the pains he had taken to ensure that a reversing spell wouldn't be viable, but she was about to find out. She whipped her wand out of her pocket to quickly assess the damage.

"A waste of your smarts, Granger."

She halted, breathing fast. His lips were starting to turn blue, and his voice was hoarser than its normally deep, silk-like purr. It made her angry, perturbed enough to narrow her eyes at him.

" _Hermione_ , Severus."

"Whatever." Exercising a trouble-sounding cough, he kept his eyes focused on the ceiling, not looking at her either out of spite or from no longer being entirely himself.

"What have you done this time?" she asked in exasperation.

"You do know that..."

"I'm choosing _not_ to think about that right now."

"Suit yourself."

Hermione circled Severus's chest with her wand. A diagnostic check floated to the surface, revealing the grim prognosis: _Poison. Morticaine. Three ounces. Organs shutting down, oxygen depleting, approaching heart failure..._

Hermione startled. " _Severus_!" she cried out, her voice rattling at the back of her throat. She was too astute for this—too quick-thinking to panic now—and yet, she succumbed with surprising ease. "Sev - Severus... What have you done?" Peering into an obsidian pair of eyes she had grown to love that were slowly slipping away from her, they wouldn't so much as meet hers.

"You can't help me, Granger," was all he said.

" _Her - Hermione_ , Sev—"

"You can't reverse this."

"But—"

"You can't rid me of what's inside me."

" _How could you_ —"

"Oh... It stopped raining."

Hermione's chest tightened. Of course she understood—deep down— _how_ the man could come to such despair. Wasn't she just towing the line of existence herself? Severus Snape was a brilliant man, yes, and self-reliant to a fault, but even exceedingly intelligent folk need more than their own minds for company.

He had submitted to the darkness, giving into quiet demons, many of which, apparently, were around before _she_ came onto the scene. Somewhere, somehow, he had lost control of who he was and succumbed to the dull ache that had plagued his heart and never let him settle in a post-Dark Lord world.

Oh, yes, did Hermione understand and feel for him... _But that doesn't make_ this _justified!_ she wanted to howl at the top of her lungs.

Scanning the wave of peace sweeping over his weary, too pale face, Hermione realised that she couldn't shout. She could barely breathe. Instead, she extended a trembling hand to his face to capture a handful of his thin black tresses. Such fine strands wove delicately in between her fingers which brushed along his brow as well, against smooth, porcelain-like skin. Suddenly, he was breathtaking.

"Y - Yes... It did stop," she whispered, choking back the sorrow gnawing at her insides.

Severus's dimming fixation finally drew itself to her, and it was perhaps the gentlest, most unabashed look he had ever bestowed upon her. Upon anyone, really. It wasn't cross, contemptible, or seething; it was soft, yet soulless, abstruse, yet unobstructed. There was no fear or trepidation in these final moments, only a gratefulness his eyes expressed at finally leaving their world; acceptance at letting go at last.

There was something else, too. Those eyes were surprisingly sad, and not for himself...

"Severus," Hermione tried to speak, but he interrupted her.

"You want to know why." His breaths were coming in faster spurts now; tight, audible gasps for air. "You _always_ want to know why. You've never asked the questions you were _supposed_ to ask, haven't you?" As an afterthought—or in an attempt to scorn her one last time—Severus shot her a severe frown. "Silly girl."

Hermione broke on those two words. She wept and she laughed, grief-stricken and encumbered with sorrow. A suffering like no other clawed its way through, sinking her weight into the bed and bringing her head to his heaving chest.

"And wha - what is that, Severus?" she asked in between retching sobs, raising her head to sadly stare.

"It isn't a question of _why_. It's a matter of what made me hold on for so fuckin' long..."

Hermione stilled, though her tears didn't. "And wh - why did you hold on for so long?"

Severus's eyes Sellotaped to hers. Then he whispered a resounding, " _You_ , of course," to which Hermione brought her head back to his chest. Her fingers tore at a handful of buttons along the front of his frock coat, her entire body desperate to cling to him; to seize Life.

" _Then why_? _Why are you leaving me, Severus_? _WHY_?"

"I can't..." he struggled to explain.

"Can't _what_? Can't deal with things? With _me_?"

"No, not you."

"Then _why_ , Severus?" She could no longer control the violent convulsions. " _Why would you do this_?" Cradling his neck with one hand, Hermione scurried to snatch up his hand with the other.

Severus stared on, eyes starting to glaze over, though they had never been more open than today. "I wasn't meant for the living. After what I've been through, after what I've experienced, after what I've seen... I... I can't live with the guilt any longer."

"But - But, Severus—"

"And I couldn't do that to you."

" _Yes, you could_! You could live! For _me_!"

"No," he paused, his chest shaking with the uncontrollable desperation for a deeper breath. "You're decent, Hermione; a symbol of everything that's _good_ in this world. We're too different, you and I."

" _That isn't true_!" she cried despairingly.

A sliver of a smile broke a corner of his mouth. "I should have died that night, you know... You weren't supposed to bring me back."

Hermione was bereft. "Wha... What are you saying?"

"You did a disservice to yourself, my dear. Look what I've brought you to. Heartache..."

"No—"

"Sadness... Frustration... Anger..."

" _No, Sev—_ "

"Resentment..." Hermione's mouth clamped shut, but the tears continued streaking down her flushed cheeks. "Ahhh, yes," he murmured. "You know..."

"You have done no such thing, you stubborn, foolish arse!" Disheartened and afraid, Hermione squeezed his hand as hard as she could. "You were the best ruddy thing that ever happened to me!"

It was an agonisingly long moment before Severus could get the words out, for his struggle to breathe was reaching a dire level. "What an...utterly horrid thing...to believe..."

" _It's true_!" Hermione snivelled, her lower lip quivering against her will. "I... I love you, Severus..."

The words were practically ripped from the back of her throat, from somewhere buried deep inside, locked away in her guarded heart. She had meant to say the words a number of times before but the fear of losing him had held her back. Instead of conveying her affections, she had swallowed the declaration that had, for months, been on the verge of confession. She stomped down her feelings of want, of need, and of tenderness and shut them out, taking the difficult, uncompromising road.

_Just as he did. Just like Severus. Oh...no.  
_

He was right: she _had_ become prone to heartache and secrets, but not _because_ of him. Rather, she had _wanted_ him all along and never found her Gryffindor courage. And he loathed himself too much to return her affections.

_But with time, he can... He could have... Oh, he would have..._

Severus stared at Hermione without blinking, mesmerised by the divine glow of her face; or, perhaps, he was simply comfortable now and could no longer see her.

Exhaling laboriously, Severus's mouth hung slightly sloped, and when he spoke again, she understood that it was in awe of her love and not from his frail body deteriorating. "That's the most senseless... _most beautiful gift_...you could have offered me..."

Then it happened. An eerie, too deafening silence fell upon the room, bringing Hermione to the grave acknowledgement that Severus was gone. Those raven eyes, dulled by the expiring of life, were still gazing at her with a final, heart-wrenching expression: longing.

A few rays of light flickered gracefully across his still face. The sun had come out at last.

Artwork for [_Here Comes the Sun_ by dena-gray](https://www.deviantart.com/dena-gray/art/Here-Comes-The-Sun-By-Crmediagal-391306393)


End file.
